College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@FiatYod said

"I recall Jim saying in a video - and I hope I remember the phrasing correctly:
"The True Will is where your deepest gladness meets the world's deepest need."
"

This is a quote from Parker J. Palmer's book Let Your Life Speak.

Here's Jim's amazon review of the book:

@Jim Eshelman said

"I wish I had written this book. Since I didn't, I'm thrilled that Parker J. Palmer did. It encompasses every instruction I have ever given a member of our Order on the pathway to meet, embrace, and resolve the mystery of True Will; and in his patient, considered authorship, he does it vastly better than I ever have.

This is a personal, human, moving, insightful, practical work on the discovery of True Will, and living life in conformity with it. While it enumerates principles, most of the book is autobiographical - the author notes that while everyone's journey is unique, instructive insights are commonly found in, rather than veiled by, the details of someone else's trip. Palmer is a Quaker, and a noted education writer. He is also an Adept as sure as any A.'.A.'. 5=6 (though he would likely never own the title), who understands, from experience, what we call the Holy Guardian Angel, even though he calls it something else.

A feeling for this book can, perhaps, be gotten from a series of brief quotations: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." "True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth." "...self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others." "The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature, which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a profoundly moral regimen." "One dwells with God by being faithful to one's nature. One crosses God by trying to be something one is not. Reality - including one's own - is divine, to be not defied but honored."

He writes of finding "the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Where Liber Legis tells us that, "There is division hither homeward," Palmer speaks to the process of finding "the courage to live divided [against ourselves] no more."

One chapter explores how limitation and ordeal conspire to discover us to ourselves. He understands projections and how to approach them. He also understands that "the way to God is down" - down into the depths of ourselves - and is found only in embracing all aspects of what is found, without judgment. He explores the mystery of depression and - though speaking of a level way, way below "the Dark Night of the Soul" - insightfully addresses its understanding and resolution by means indistinguishable from those that apply to the sojourning of that most profound abyss. His moral thrust is reflected in a quote from John Middleton Murry: "For a good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license."

My worst criticism of this hardbound little book is that it could benefit from a better binding, but that is the only weakness in its manufacture. Its contents can transform a life. I give it the highest of recommendations."

@LD330 said

"The concept of medical insurance is based on the idea that, in the social field, you don't have to chop off your dick with a pair of rusty scissors or get an abortion with a coat-hanger. You get to feel safe...…..

edit...……

Further, when** normal people** stop screwing each other over, the people we actually don't want, serial killers and the like, get revealed, because with the newfound libido, they can't keep a secret anymore. It might very well turn out that these people are the only reason all of us don't have medical insurance in the first place.
**
This is another reason we love the police** and actively help them. **We want the government to protect us **"

i bolded some things that I dont think are in accordance with The Law of Thelema. maybe its just my perception of the Law though.

I also bolded some words that you used may have used for shock value to draw conversation, I mean really??? Rusty......hangers??? come on. you want to talk about what Thelema "might" be percieved as (this New concept/medical insurance) but then seem to utter from the gutter about "these people we dont want" "we love the plolice" "we want the govmt to protect us"?

you may love the plolice and you may want the govt to protect you because that is who you are as a person, but dont think for one minute that I want the govt to protect me, or the reason I love cops is they "keep me safe"

that not at all why I love cops, and if I needed to be protected Id be dead by the time the cops got here, so I had better learn to fend for myself.
my feelings of safety, or my feelings of not being safe, are completely the manufacture of elements that I have brought into my own life, by nature of being me, and it is up to me to act in the best accordance to what is my true nature in accordance to "feelings" that I have about a perceived threat.

I don't buy insurance. it is a huge economic scam, from the dollars you spend on this plane to your local medical insurance carrier, alll the way to the others planes of energy exchange.
it a lie and as Un-Thelemic as slavery, bigotry, any of the _ism (ie sexism, agism).
I will call the cops, but I will also kick ass myself all the while I am waiting for them to show up.

but if you want to buy insurance I am sure you will find a store house of agents who will gladly reinforce your desire, if that truly is your desire. 👼

I would like to understand this, as it sounds interesting, but I feel the bulk of this post sailed over my head. And that picture didn't help much at all 😆

Thanks for the reply.

I don't think "actualizing oneself as the opposite gender" is the accurate way to put this phenomenon. My experience of this is that the desire will do it for you. You are not running the machine; the machine is running you.

@Land, Meltdown, Fanged Noumena, p. 456 said

"Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominately vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.

Garbage time is running out.

Can what is playing you make it to level 2?

Meltdown has a place for you as a schizophrenic HIV+ transsexual chinese-latino stim-addicted LA hooker with implanted mirrorshades and a bad attitude.
"

He references vampiric lesbianism a couple times throughout Fanged Noumena and Crowley too in the chapter on Qabbalah. I take these as references to Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-womans, whom the book is indebted to.

"I would take a more Austin Osman Spare approach and heed this as a reference to Self-Love. If one insists on a gender-based context, I would still lean towards simple androgyny (or even masturbation) rather than a call to actualizing oneself as the opposite sex."

I agree with the self-love interpretation.

That said, I am less inclined to agree the latter part of your quote, considering the author of my quote also wrote:

@Crowley said

"Now I'll shave and make up my face like the lowest kind of whore and rub on perfume and go after Genesthai [Russell] like a drunken two-bit prick-pit in old New Orleans. He disgusts me sexually, as I him, as I suspect…[T]he dirtier my deed, the dearer my darling will hold me; the grosser the act the greedier my arse to engulph him!"

Further, we are talking about acceleration here. If we are to admit androgyny and masturbation I see no reason for desire to stop itself when it finds out it has woman's desire.

Further, we don't have the structure to talk about these beneficial processes (becoming-woman) in Thelema like we do in postmodern philosophy, in spite of the fact that Crowley was using them himself. I went through them myself and had to dig them out of Crowley, D&G, Rimbaud and Lacan. They are more powerful than anyone gives them credit for --because most people won't do them--. It's how you get voodoo.

I had to dig them out of those respective authors in the first place because everyone else is too dull to see them, or pretending they are too dull to see them. You feel "crazy" to be this much more able than others, and that ultimately is the reason I am posting. Yes it's real. Maybe it'll help someone else who stumbles on this forum out of interest in Crowley, or help other people who are actually capable.

To abstract this process, and see the world where we admit our desire is valid, is in my estimation normal. The fact that we can't abstract this is no longer my failure but yours.

It may be uncomfortable, but it's real --and part of an actual process for humanity--. Why it's a process and not already done is my contention. That's the context of the thread I have here.

Namaste.

@Hermitas said

"
@LD330 said
"I want agon to stop."

Then everything stagnates and dies."

Exactly. That's why I think he meant a particular instance of Agon, rather than the general concept of Agon.

Everything is under control.

The Lovers card is pretty complicated. I notice the two females together with the males produce some sort of formula or process. I can feel it but can't really articulate what it is. We also have Cupid or Karma shooting an arrow, a puppetmaster and a male statue and a female statue. Also the Ten of Swords (Ruin) is in the background.

I wonder if the male and female statues are representing ideal male/female forms. I also wonder if they are actual famous statues from art history. Crowley references the Venus of Milo in the Book of Lies.

The puppetmaster I also understand intuitively but don't really get. Who is this figure? He, plus Karma (Desire) seem to be motioning the Universe. The male/female dichotomy is in the card, but not as openly as in the Rider-Waite version of the card. We almost have the boys separated from the girls as in elementary school.

Another New Aeon card I have been considering is the Aeon. The figure in front is an invisible-transparent Harpocrates and behind him we have Ra Hoor Kuit.

I don't know much about Harpocrates symbolism (outside its association with silence) but the ideas I'm getting now are that Harpocrates is the Geist or Spirit, the Silent Philosopher standing and thinking. Behind him we have Ra Hoor Kuit, the Lord of the Aeon, ruling over Harpocrates' thoughts. We only have the thoughts we do due to the society we live in and the people we associate with. The thoughts we have are based on the knowledge we have as a society, which will change throughout history (the aeons). The thoughts of a person in ancient Greece will be different from a medieval monk which will be different from our current way of thinking.

I also see Ra Hoor Kuit as the "current reterritorialization" of humanity; humanity's current, generalized map of reality. As I see it, if someone discovers something new or has an original idea, Ra Hoor Kuit's function is to allow that new idea to be expressed, if it is True, even if it differs from the expectations of humanity.

What Harpocrates thinks is dependent on what Ra Hoor Kuit, the Aeon, allows him to think. It took time for atheism to become accepted. I wonder if this is because people expected others would start acting entirely out of control, breaking all the laws, etc. if atheism was widespread and no one believed in God. This is an extreme example; from an everyday perspective, what we think about is what everybody else thinks about, and our philosophy is kept on Earth by the genetic, God-given "What should I eat today?" and "I have to go to the bathroom", along with social behavior type thoughts.

I think Harpocrates represents the Thinker of the one Thought, the once-in-a-while stroke-of-genius thought that occurs outside of the banalities.

But this is just my opinion and my development of my own philosophy.

It's probably a gov run honeypot.

Very nice commentary, but regarding 88: I think what he meant was more like the folk tale where someone declares: "Mail me a dollar and I'll show you how to become rich", and when he got enough mails, he responded to them with "Do as I did."

Sorry Alice. That was a very abstract idea.

I'm about 2/3 done with his seminars and have gleaned much more knowledge from reading them.

Desire and Language

It's possible to take desire from language. Consider a child learning how to speak. They want to enter into language in order to be able to communicate with the adults. This is their desire to enter into language. We still have this same desire. This was for me the appeal of Erowid and drug literature like Fear and Loathing or Junky. The authors' entrance into a new language, in this case the language of the drug world, resulted in their also taking desire.

I think it's possible to take desire continuously. Doing so would create a "Living Language." If a group of people had no ressentiment, meaning they would not interfere and let things take their course, we could continuously take and let a language evolve, phenomenologically describing states and naming them.

I actually took a lot of desire from Crowley's work and his associated lexicon.

Desire and the Big Other

Lacan has a very beautiful formula for how we take desire. I wish I could draw the diagram out.

Basically desire flows from the Big Other, A, (our idea of everyone else) up to $ <> D, the barred subject's desire or phantasy. This barred desire flows horizontally into a limit, the phallus. Moving downward from the phallus, through the line of anal sexuality, we hit S(A), or the subject with respect to the Big Other.

Enjoyment and Sexual Discourse

"The woman is in a position, with respect to sexual enjoyment, to punctuate the equivalence of enjoyment and the semblance [semblance here being her discourse-- what clothes she likes, what she finds hot for herself, how she enjoys, etc]...

In this lies the distance man finds from her. That the semblance is here enjoyment, for the man, is sufficiently indicated by the fact that enjoyment is semblance [He enjoys her discourse, clothes, etc.]...

The woman knows enjoyment and semblance, if they are equivalent in a dimension of discourse, are nonetheless distinct in the test, that the woman represents for man the truth."

No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

There is no such thing as a sexual relationship. Belief in the existence of a sexual relationship is one way people get "Choronzon'd."

Jouissabsence vs. Jouisspresence

There are two types of jouissance: jouisspresence, or the standard phallic jouissance, and jouissabsence, the feminine form of jouissance. Males have jouissabsence too, it is right underneath jouisspresence and generally is "unrecognized."

Females have a mixture of jouissabsence and jouisspresence. Males do too, but as males, generally only the jouisspresence is recognized.

Idealism and Gender

No philosopher, not even Berkeley, has ever pushed idealism so far as to deny the existence of two distinct sexes.

Virtual Sexuality

"In copulation the subject cannot really possess the body that he embraces. He does not know the limits of possible jouissance, I mean the one that he can have of the body of the Other, as such, because these limits are uncertain... Here we find the fainting function (the little death) to which he loses the third element of the relation of the couple."

Hitting the limits of jouissance by the reduction of the "three" of a sexual relationship down to the two. (The third in the relationship being the others besides me and you). I think there is a Kabbalistic metaphor here, of reducing Binah to Chockmah.

Ethics and the Big Other

I don't think any idea of society is ethical. It's better to have general resentment against an individual than it is to push them against the entire society or an entire group of people. The "everyone-else", meaning everyone else in the world, is the closest thing to God there is, and to invoke this against a person is unethical. That is not their subject point. I think this is one reason Satanism, especially including ONA-style Satanism, can frighten people. They don't invoke the Big Other, and are more ethical (right) for it.

But this formula flows back into the one articulated above in "Desire and the Big Other." I think most desire is female-- that is, desire is the desire of the other, or an image of oneself; and with that image the possibility of a new world.

If anyone is interested in reading Lacan, most of his work, including untranslated seminars, is available at www.lacaninireland.com/web/translations/seminars/. Finding out every other seminar is already translated online has been a great boon for me.

@LD330 said

"
I don't know if it's empty speculation to think about paths for humanity-- I think that's a very important thing to think about. Not only is a mass awakening possible, it's incipient. If we don't dream about it, we won't get it.

"

Fully agreed with If we don't dream about it, we won't get it. I appreciate you opening this thread, I too feel strongly drawn to meditate on this subject; the reply above was addressing the tendency to loose balance in this, a note for you as well as myself. Keep the philosophy grounded!

"I don't think any action whatsoever can be taken without the entire scope of humanity being involved-- we are a system, not individual."

We are both! - simultaneously, in each instance of experience (the interchange of Had and Nu constitutes what we perceive/experience as experience 😄 ). The error of philosophy of the past was the approach of either/or - the Aeon of the Child is the birth of both-at-once awareness.

@LD330 said

"but I mean repetition or the tendencies."

It sounds like what some Hindus and Buddhists call the "vasanas". These are the tendencies which are accrued through learned, repetitive behavior (or metempsychosis/prarabdha karma if you are so inclined) and are responsible for all modes of attachment, including desire, addictions, personality, etc. These are also what need to be curtailed, sutured and brought back to focus in order to experience samadhi. They are what "remains" of the Ego from the standpoint of being across the Abyss. As Nothing can cross that wasteland intact save for that which is One, the vasanas or tendencies provide the loose structure in which the Neschamah (I'll admit to a fondness for Crowley's preferred terms 😉) inhabits to interact with multiplicity. The Ego then not being any kind of truth is merely a codified Habit which nevertheless allows us to broach the gap of the planes as it were.

See: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14646&p=101953#p101359">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14646&p=101953#p101359</a><!-- l -->

The trouble with Freudians is sex-obsession.

It isn't 'all about sex' it's about orgone i.e. chi y'know prana.

@Takamba said

"Obviously, you're the type who super-ego injunction hate super-ego injunctions the way you do. Also, the irony is too funny, so maybe you super-ego injunction go into comedy: The Punk Mystic! (kicking dogma in the balls!)"

I laughed so hard at this. 😆
But yes, your hate is indeed a super-ego injunction.

woooouhhh, what a long list...

Did you know, that different Paradoxi exists?
Take actors... They reach a point in their life, in which they can "open up", and at the end they are , what they are...

I am a paradoxa too, the proof can be found in the Nihillis-Logic Liber...

My Paradoxa is, that Paradoxa is called Dilemma in this world 😕

I see the Tarot as a means of initiating a dialogue with the "Unconcious."
Which is not fooled by "facing things down."
Though you could as easily use pennies (ART)

The "science" part comes in doing it over and over and over and over and over via a consistent method, establishing proper communication.